September 17, 2006
“The Teaching about Marriage and Divorceâ€
By The Reverend Joanna M. Adams
Morningside Presbyterian Church, Atlanta
“The Teaching about Marriage and Divorceâ€
The Reverend Joanna M. Adams
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, Georgia
September 17, 2006
“The Teaching about Marriage and Divorce”
The Reverend Joanna M. Adams
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, Georgia
September 17, 2006
Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Mark 10:9
At Morningside Church, we are engaged in a six-week series of sermons on family and human relationships. This morning we turn our attention to the interrelated topics of marriage and divorce. We begin by looking at the current state of marriage in the United States. In a book entitled From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate some sobering studies are cited that show that the United States has gone from being “the most marrying society in the world to the one with the most divorces and single parent families. Among all the industrialized nations, the United States has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and teenage childbirth despite having the highest rate of teenage abortion.” (1)
“A Barna poll conducted in 2001 found that cohabitation- living with a member of the opposite sex without marriage- has been practiced at some time by 33% of all adults and 25 % of born-again Christians . . .40% of those cohabitating do not marry.’ (2)
Another study, done by a non-partisan group called the Council on Families in America, has these words in its report: “During the past several decades, the American divorce rate has doubled and the percentage of unwed births has quadrupled.” No domestic challenge is more important than to “reclaim the ideal of marriage’s permanence and to affirm marriage as the preeminent environment for childbearing.” (3)
You have probably not ever heard of the Council on Families in America, but I will tell you that it has no political or religious or ideological agenda or axe to grind. The Council that made the report consisted of ethicists, law professors, sociologists, and historians. Even Miss Manners was a member of the group. The concern of the Council was for the health of society’s oldest institution, which appears to be in peril in modern western society.
The well-being of the family ought to be everyone’s concern. One of the mysteries I ponder on a regular basis is why the religious right has been allowed to commandeer public concern about the family. Family matters to all of us: rich, poor, middle-class, card-carrying members of the ACLU and listeners to the Neal Boortz radio show. Regardless of religion, race, or sex, human beings need families. We begin our lives in a family unit of some shape or another, unless we are born and are raised in the early days and months of our lives as motherless or fatherless children. It is in the home that, ideally we begin the life-long process of figuring out how to be human. Marriage is the institution within the institution of the family that anchors and blends the whole set of complex relationships.
Today, I want to talk about marriage and divorce. Later in the sermon series, we will talk about the highly charged subject of gay marriage, but today the subject is what our scriptures say about traditional marriage: where it comes from and where within the Christian understanding, it is acceptable for a marriage to come to an end.
I am very aware that many people are not currently married and have not been married. Marriage is not the norm that every person ought to follow. There are other, equally valid ways of being in the world. I am focusing on this topic today because marriage is an institution that is important to the human family, of which we all are members.
According to Genesis, God’s first concern for the newly minted creation was the isolated state of the most prominent member of the creation, and that would be the human creature. God’s first attempt at a solution for that problem came in the form of the creation of animals and birds, which the human creature was given the privilege of naming. One Biblical scholar has noted that the only pronouncement of “Not Good” in the entire creation story was God’s evaluation of human loneliness. First, God created animals and birds, but they did not completely fill that innate human need for partnership, for relatedness. As cute as puppies and pandas and parakeets were, they didn’t do the job, so God decided to create another human being. The intimate covenantal relationship between man and woman was one of the original good things, like air and light and water and everything else the universe and its creatures need for both survival and joyful living.
The Presbyterian marriage service says, “God gave us marriage so that husband and wife may be helpful and comforting to one another, so that they may live faithfully together in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health throughout all their days.” One of the prayers I like to use in a marriage ceremony has these words in it: “Almighty God, look with favor we pray upon Sherry and Frank and all who you make to be one flesh in marriage. Let their lives together be a witness to your love in a broken world, a sign that unity can overcome estrangement and joy can triumph over despair.” In other words, marriage is not just for the two who are involved, but it is a sign in and for the world, that truth and love, unity and peace will finally carry the day.
I recall a wedding I did, probably 20 years ago, a second marriage for both groom and bride. His wife had died; her first marriage had ended in divorce. They had grown children and grandchildren, and they decided to marry. The families gathered on the wedding day. There were the granddaughters in little ruffled dresses and the grandsons with clip-on bow ties. The bride was calm; the groom was a wreck. He and I were in my study when we heard the organist begin to play Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring – that’s marching music for a wedding. I said “It’s time to go.” We got up. We walked out the door. I closed the door. We walked down the hall. Halfway down, he said, “Joanna I need to ask you something.”
I stopped and said, “Go right ahead.” He said, “No, I need to ask you something privately.” There was no one around, but we turned around and went back to the office. We sat down. The organist started up Jesu all over again. He said, “Do you think we are doing the right thing?”
I said, “I know you are.”
I believed in them, but even more, I believe in God who graciously gives us the courage to make promises to one another and who covenants with us to be at work for good in our marriage relationships. If you marry, you can bet your life that God is going to be there for you. Now, you may accept the gift or not. One of you may accept it, and the other may not, but the promise and the possibility are there. That couple has been married twenty years now and have done very well together. .
We are going to talk about marriage further later in October. We will ask the question: Who is the head of the household, and what are the characteristics of a marriage in terms of the Biblical models that we find, some of which are good and wonderful and inspiring and some of which are not so swell? Today, I will mention one key characteristic of a good, lasting marriage. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is understood that “the marriage union, the sexual union, should create a life-long bond of fidelity.” (4) Will you be faithful to him only? Will you be faithful to her only, as long as you both shall live? That is the question, and I have asked it many times. Not a single person has ever said, “No I won’t,” but I imagine that a few have failed to keep the promise they made with the best intentions on their wedding day.
Psychology Today reports that one-half of all married people cheat on their spouses. It may comfort you to know that according to this same article, 84% of them feel guilty about it. There are many admonitions for fidelity in the scriptures, which is an indication that the whole matter of fidelity has been an issue since the human community began. Think about it this way. You don’t have laws against riding a bicycle on a sidewalk if no one is actually riding a bicycle on a sidewalk.
Marriages were arranged in the communities out of which the scriptures emerged. (The notion that marriage and love are connected is a relatively recent idea.) The reasons for marriage were ordinarily procreation or the solidification of property. Nevertheless, fidelity has always mattered. When fidelity is not present, commitment is compromised, and trust is broken. Infidelity is not limited to sexual infidelity of course. We can make a mistress or a lover out of our work, giving to our professional lives the devotion and energy that is really due our spouse. Infidelity can take many forms, and few married people can always manage every day to be faithful in both the letter and the spirit of the law of love. Yet, God expects us to honor and keep the promises we make in God’s holy name. When, as flawed human beings, we fail to keep those promises, repentance and forgiveness need to become the operative principles.
When people confessed their failings and sins before Jesus, he said to them, “Get up, get going, and sin no more. I make it possible for you to move into a new way of being. Forgive yourself, as I have forgiven you.” Restoration, not retribution is always the goal in the kingdom of God.
In Anne Tyler’s novel Saint Maybe, a character who is wracked with regret about what he has done in the past is walking down a city sidewalk. He passes a storefront church that has written across the window, “The Church of Jesus Christ of the Second Chance.” Thanks be to God that we have a Savior, a gospel that offers a second chance. If we are in Christ, it really is possible to become a new creation.
But what do we do when reconciliation is not possible, when there is no willingness to change, when there is hostility or abuse, or betrayal that just won’t quit, when there is not a creative partnership but, rather, a mutually destructive disaster? Sometimes, we have no choice but to conclude that something other than the providence of God brought a couple together. When that happens, divorce is sometimes the most appropriate option, which leads us to this harsh sounding teaching of Jesus in the gospel of Mark. Actually you can find it in another version in Matthew’s gospel. The words against divorce are found in many places in the New Testament. What shall we do with them?
Among all the changing words of our generation, let me suggest that as daunting as Jesus’ teaching about divorce seems to be, we must remember that he came among us to inaugurate a new way of being, to restore the right order that was God’s original intention, but that, because of the sin and brokenness of the world, got lost. Jesus came to re-introduce the idea that through God’s grace, we can do better, because we are now citizens of a new world order. Our human failures do not boot out the original vision that we are to live together in love and loyalty and fidelity. None of us, married or divorced, actually lives according to the principles of the new world order all the way, but our failures on so many counts do nothing to take away the vision of what God intends and what Christ in his grace makes possible.
In the world to come, will there be divorce? Well, not when all of history is drawn finally in to full communion with God. But when that day comes, there will no longer be any marriages that have become untenable or sources of cruelty and unrelenting pain. For in the world that Christ makes possible and that we are moving toward, there will be no more brokenness or pain, for the former things will have passed away. In the meantime, divorce is not the ideal; it is not the goal, but sometimes it is the only viable choice for life and wholeness. Would I tell you that Jesus would not want you, if you were divorced, to remarry as this passage seems to indicate? I would say that Jesus would want all of us to move on toward restoration in our lives, whatever form that restoration would take.
What would Jesus say to the church? What would he say to the church that has failed to open wide the door of his healing grace, the church that so often fails to offer acceptance and invitation to a new life? I think he would say to all of us, whenever we judge or reject, “You can do a lot better than that.” One of the saddest moments in my ministry was in another congregation, when I saw a church member whom I had not seen in worship in a long time. “I’ve missed you,” I said.
She answered, “Joanna, my marriage has fallen apart. How could I possibly come to church in a state like that?” What an indictment on the brokenness of the church! Is not this a place where all of us receive healing, forgiveness, and hear the great news that beyond the worst that life can do to us, God offers a new beginning.
Bill Arnold, a former professor of Pastoral Care, has written, “The church is charged with inviting back home all of those who feel exiled. This is done best when there is a firm and tender invitation to face one’s own difficulties and be made whole again. In church we must remember to minister to one another, because we all have shortcomings to be admitted and shared.” (5) None of us is a bit better than any of the rest of us. What we are about here in the church is restoring relationships. We are in the resurrection business here. We are in the business of remembering that as Paul Tillich put it, God can draw the new out of the old. Resurrection is not an event that happens way back there in the past or way out there in the future, “it is the power of a new being, life being created out of death, here and now.” You can experience the power of resurrection faith even in the heart of human brokenness. Actually I would say, especially in the heart of human brokenness.
In the beginning, God said, “It is not good for that human creature I have made to be alone.” And because God is good, God gave us one another. Figuring out how to be connected to one another in love and mutuality - that is the challenge in every age.
I close with the words of Ernest Hemingway, in A Farewell to Arms. “The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, many are made strong in the broken places.”
May it be so for each of you, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(1) As quoted by Jack Rogers in Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, Westminster/ John Knox Press, 2006, p.102.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Promises to Keep, Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America, Popenoe, Elshtain,and Blankenhorn, eds. Rowman and Littlefield, 1996, p. ix.
(4) Albert C. Winn, A Christian Primer, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990, p. 234.
(5) As quoted in Is there Life After Divorce, Richard Lynn Morgan, John Knox Press, 1985, p.5.
Prayer: O Loving God, maker of all beautiful things, you made the sun to rise in splendor and march across the sky. You gave babies their laugh, and flowers their fragrance, and lions their majesty, human beings their conscience, so we rejoice today in the particular gift of human relationships: Mothers, fathers, sisters, brother, parents, children, friends, comrades – beloved all. We thank you for the infinite manifestations of love in our lives and in the world. We pray that you would give us the grace to be open to receiving love when it is offered, that you would five us the grace to return it in even fuller measure. Hear now our prayers for relationships in which the bonds of love are weak. Where separation threatens, we pray that you would move in with your forgiving power. Melt hard hearts, break the hold of stubborn pride, and in those relationships where divorce or separation are a reality, we pray that you would ease the pain and restore self-confidence and the blessed gift of being able to trust again. We pray for the human family, O God, for peace in places of conflict around the world, for justice where there is oppression, for an end to abuse and violence, for hope and reconciliation. We pray all these things in the name of Christ our brother, who at the wedding feast in Cana turned the water into wine, and whose refreshing Spirit, even now, can turn our lives and our relationships into deep wells of joy. These are our prayers this day, O God, offered in the name of Christ. Amen*
*Some of the thoughts and phrases in this prayer came from Ruth Duck’s Flames of the Spirit and The Worshipbook of the PCUSA.
For Lasting Marriages, Church Matters…
Studies of the relationship between spirituality and marital longevity offer helpful clues for having a marriage that sizzles rather than fizzles.
A national 15-year study found that couples who went to church once a month or more were less than half as likely to divorce as those who rarely or never attended. Interestingly, neither the husband’s nor wife’s respective religious affiliations, nor whether they belonged to the same denomination, made a difference. Only the frequency of their religious attendance correlated significantly with their commitment to maintaining the marriage.
A 1999 study of 97 couples found that those who saw marriage as sacred “tended to engage in more constructive, collaborative means of problem-solving than did the less spiritual group.” Results showed the more religiously active couples not only rated higher in marital satisfaction and had fewer marital conflicts, they also felt marriage benefited them more as individuals. They solved problems in constructive ways rather than resorting to hostility, such as verbal aggression and stonewalling.
Another study of 147 couples whose first marriages lasted 20 years or more found that 10 traits consistently rose to the top of a list of 59 potential strengths:
1. Lifetime commitment to marriage
2. Loyalty to spouse
3. Strong moral values
4. Respect for spouse as best friend
5. Commitment to sexual fidelity
6. Desire to be a good parent
7. Faith in God and spiritual commitment
8. Desire to please and support spouse
9. Good companion to spouse
10. Willingness to forgive and be forgiven
-- Susan S. Larson, M.A.T.
“The Teaching about Marriage and Divorce†The Reverend Joanna M. Adams Morningside Presbyterian Church Atlanta, Georgia September 17, 2006
| |
“The Teaching about Marriage and Divorce”
The Reverend Joanna M. Adams
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, Georgia
September 17, 2006
Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Mark 10:9
At Morningside Church, we are engaged in a six-week series of sermons on family and human relationships. This morning we turn our attention to the interrelated topics of marriage and divorce. We begin by looking at the current state of marriage in the United States. In a book entitled From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate some sobering studies are cited that show that the United States has gone from being “the most marrying society in the world to the one with the most divorces and single parent families. Among all the industrialized nations, the United States has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and teenage childbirth despite having the highest rate of teenage abortion.” (1)
“A Barna poll conducted in 2001 found that cohabitation- living with a member of the opposite sex without marriage- has been practiced at some time by 33% of all adults and 25 % of born-again Christians . . .40% of those cohabitating do not marry.’ (2)
Another study, done by a non-partisan group called the Council on Families in America, has these words in its report: “During the past several decades, the American divorce rate has doubled and the percentage of unwed births has quadrupled.” No domestic challenge is more important than to “reclaim the ideal of marriage’s permanence and to affirm marriage as the preeminent environment for childbearing.” (3)
You have probably not ever heard of the Council on Families in America, but I will tell you that it has no political or religious or ideological agenda or axe to grind. The Council that made the report consisted of ethicists, law professors, sociologists, and historians. Even Miss Manners was a member of the group. The concern of the Council was for the health of society’s oldest institution, which appears to be in peril in modern western society.
The well-being of the family ought to be everyone’s concern. One of the mysteries I ponder on a regular basis is why the religious right has been allowed to commandeer public concern about the family. Family matters to all of us: rich, poor, middle-class, card-carrying members of the ACLU and listeners to the Neal Boortz radio show. Regardless of religion, race, or sex, human beings need families. We begin our lives in a family unit of some shape or another, unless we are born and are raised in the early days and months of our lives as motherless or fatherless children. It is in the home that, ideally we begin the life-long process of figuring out how to be human. Marriage is the institution within the institution of the family that anchors and blends the whole set of complex relationships.
Today, I want to talk about marriage and divorce. Later in the sermon series, we will talk about the highly charged subject of gay marriage, but today the subject is what our scriptures say about traditional marriage: where it comes from and where within the Christian understanding, it is acceptable for a marriage to come to an end.
I am very aware that many people are not currently married and have not been married. Marriage is not the norm that every person ought to follow. There are other, equally valid ways of being in the world. I am focusing on this topic today because marriage is an institution that is important to the human family, of which we all are members.
According to Genesis, God’s first concern for the newly minted creation was the isolated state of the most prominent member of the creation, and that would be the human creature. God’s first attempt at a solution for that problem came in the form of the creation of animals and birds, which the human creature was given the privilege of naming. One Biblical scholar has noted that the only pronouncement of “Not Good” in the entire creation story was God’s evaluation of human loneliness. First, God created animals and birds, but they did not completely fill that innate human need for partnership, for relatedness. As cute as puppies and pandas and parakeets were, they didn’t do the job, so God decided to create another human being. The intimate covenantal relationship between man and woman was one of the original good things, like air and light and water and everything else the universe and its creatures need for both survival and joyful living.
The Presbyterian marriage service says, “God gave us marriage so that husband and wife may be helpful and comforting to one another, so that they may live faithfully together in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health throughout all their days.” One of the prayers I like to use in a marriage ceremony has these words in it: “Almighty God, look with favor we pray upon Sherry and Frank and all who you make to be one flesh in marriage. Let their lives together be a witness to your love in a broken world, a sign that unity can overcome estrangement and joy can triumph over despair.” In other words, marriage is not just for the two who are involved, but it is a sign in and for the world, that truth and love, unity and peace will finally carry the day.
I recall a wedding I did, probably 20 years ago, a second marriage for both groom and bride. His wife had died; her first marriage had ended in divorce. They had grown children and grandchildren, and they decided to marry. The families gathered on the wedding day. There were the granddaughters in little ruffled dresses and the grandsons with clip-on bow ties. The bride was calm; the groom was a wreck. He and I were in my study when we heard the organist begin to play Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring – that’s marching music for a wedding. I said “It’s time to go.” We got up. We walked out the door. I closed the door. We walked down the hall. Halfway down, he said, “Joanna I need to ask you something.”
I stopped and said, “Go right ahead.” He said, “No, I need to ask you something privately.” There was no one around, but we turned around and went back to the office. We sat down. The organist started up Jesu all over again. He said, “Do you think we are doing the right thing?”
I said, “I know you are.”
I believed in them, but even more, I believe in God who graciously gives us the courage to make promises to one another and who covenants with us to be at work for good in our marriage relationships. If you marry, you can bet your life that God is going to be there for you. Now, you may accept the gift or not. One of you may accept it, and the other may not, but the promise and the possibility are there. That couple has been married twenty years now and have done very well together. .
We are going to talk about marriage further later in October. We will ask the question: Who is the head of the household, and what are the characteristics of a marriage in terms of the Biblical models that we find, some of which are good and wonderful and inspiring and some of which are not so swell? Today, I will mention one key characteristic of a good, lasting marriage. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is understood that “the marriage union, the sexual union, should create a life-long bond of fidelity.” (4) Will you be faithful to him only? Will you be faithful to her only, as long as you both shall live? That is the question, and I have asked it many times. Not a single person has ever said, “No I won’t,” but I imagine that a few have failed to keep the promise they made with the best intentions on their wedding day.
Psychology Today reports that one-half of all married people cheat on their spouses. It may comfort you to know that according to this same article, 84% of them feel guilty about it. There are many admonitions for fidelity in the scriptures, which is an indication that the whole matter of fidelity has been an issue since the human community began. Think about it this way. You don’t have laws against riding a bicycle on a sidewalk if no one is actually riding a bicycle on a sidewalk.
Marriages were arranged in the communities out of which the scriptures emerged. (The notion that marriage and love are connected is a relatively recent idea.) The reasons for marriage were ordinarily procreation or the solidification of property. Nevertheless, fidelity has always mattered. When fidelity is not present, commitment is compromised, and trust is broken. Infidelity is not limited to sexual infidelity of course. We can make a mistress or a lover out of our work, giving to our professional lives the devotion and energy that is really due our spouse. Infidelity can take many forms, and few married people can always manage every day to be faithful in both the letter and the spirit of the law of love. Yet, God expects us to honor and keep the promises we make in God’s holy name. When, as flawed human beings, we fail to keep those promises, repentance and forgiveness need to become the operative principles.
When people confessed their failings and sins before Jesus, he said to them, “Get up, get going, and sin no more. I make it possible for you to move into a new way of being. Forgive yourself, as I have forgiven you.” Restoration, not retribution is always the goal in the kingdom of God.
In Anne Tyler’s novel Saint Maybe, a character who is wracked with regret about what he has done in the past is walking down a city sidewalk. He passes a storefront church that has written across the window, “The Church of Jesus Christ of the Second Chance.” Thanks be to God that we have a Savior, a gospel that offers a second chance. If we are in Christ, it really is possible to become a new creation.
But what do we do when reconciliation is not possible, when there is no willingness to change, when there is hostility or abuse, or betrayal that just won’t quit, when there is not a creative partnership but, rather, a mutually destructive disaster? Sometimes, we have no choice but to conclude that something other than the providence of God brought a couple together. When that happens, divorce is sometimes the most appropriate option, which leads us to this harsh sounding teaching of Jesus in the gospel of Mark. Actually you can find it in another version in Matthew’s gospel. The words against divorce are found in many places in the New Testament. What shall we do with them?
Among all the changing words of our generation, let me suggest that as daunting as Jesus’ teaching about divorce seems to be, we must remember that he came among us to inaugurate a new way of being, to restore the right order that was God’s original intention, but that, because of the sin and brokenness of the world, got lost. Jesus came to re-introduce the idea that through God’s grace, we can do better, because we are now citizens of a new world order. Our human failures do not boot out the original vision that we are to live together in love and loyalty and fidelity. None of us, married or divorced, actually lives according to the principles of the new world order all the way, but our failures on so many counts do nothing to take away the vision of what God intends and what Christ in his grace makes possible.
In the world to come, will there be divorce? Well, not when all of history is drawn finally in to full communion with God. But when that day comes, there will no longer be any marriages that have become untenable or sources of cruelty and unrelenting pain. For in the world that Christ makes possible and that we are moving toward, there will be no more brokenness or pain, for the former things will have passed away. In the meantime, divorce is not the ideal; it is not the goal, but sometimes it is the only viable choice for life and wholeness. Would I tell you that Jesus would not want you, if you were divorced, to remarry as this passage seems to indicate? I would say that Jesus would want all of us to move on toward restoration in our lives, whatever form that restoration would take.
What would Jesus say to the church? What would he say to the church that has failed to open wide the door of his healing grace, the church that so often fails to offer acceptance and invitation to a new life? I think he would say to all of us, whenever we judge or reject, “You can do a lot better than that.” One of the saddest moments in my ministry was in another congregation, when I saw a church member whom I had not seen in worship in a long time. “I’ve missed you,” I said.
She answered, “Joanna, my marriage has fallen apart. How could I possibly come to church in a state like that?” What an indictment on the brokenness of the church! Is not this a place where all of us receive healing, forgiveness, and hear the great news that beyond the worst that life can do to us, God offers a new beginning.
Bill Arnold, a former professor of Pastoral Care, has written, “The church is charged with inviting back home all of those who feel exiled. This is done best when there is a firm and tender invitation to face one’s own difficulties and be made whole again. In church we must remember to minister to one another, because we all have shortcomings to be admitted and shared.” (5) None of us is a bit better than any of the rest of us. What we are about here in the church is restoring relationships. We are in the resurrection business here. We are in the business of remembering that as Paul Tillich put it, God can draw the new out of the old. Resurrection is not an event that happens way back there in the past or way out there in the future, “it is the power of a new being, life being created out of death, here and now.” You can experience the power of resurrection faith even in the heart of human brokenness. Actually I would say, especially in the heart of human brokenness.
In the beginning, God said, “It is not good for that human creature I have made to be alone.” And because God is good, God gave us one another. Figuring out how to be connected to one another in love and mutuality - that is the challenge in every age.
I close with the words of Ernest Hemingway, in A Farewell to Arms. “The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, many are made strong in the broken places.”
May it be so for each of you, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(1) As quoted by Jack Rogers in Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, Westminster/ John Knox Press, 2006, p.102.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Promises to Keep, Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America, Popenoe, Elshtain,and Blankenhorn, eds. Rowman and Littlefield, 1996, p. ix.
(4) Albert C. Winn, A Christian Primer, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990, p. 234.
(5) As quoted in Is there Life After Divorce, Richard Lynn Morgan, John Knox Press, 1985, p.5.
Prayer: O Loving God, maker of all beautiful things, you made the sun to rise in splendor and march across the sky. You gave babies their laugh, and flowers their fragrance, and lions their majesty, human beings their conscience, so we rejoice today in the particular gift of human relationships: Mothers, fathers, sisters, brother, parents, children, friends, comrades – beloved all. We thank you for the infinite manifestations of love in our lives and in the world. We pray that you would give us the grace to be open to receiving love when it is offered, that you would five us the grace to return it in even fuller measure. Hear now our prayers for relationships in which the bonds of love are weak. Where separation threatens, we pray that you would move in with your forgiving power. Melt hard hearts, break the hold of stubborn pride, and in those relationships where divorce or separation are a reality, we pray that you would ease the pain and restore self-confidence and the blessed gift of being able to trust again. We pray for the human family, O God, for peace in places of conflict around the world, for justice where there is oppression, for an end to abuse and violence, for hope and reconciliation. We pray all these things in the name of Christ our brother, who at the wedding feast in Cana turned the water into wine, and whose refreshing Spirit, even now, can turn our lives and our relationships into deep wells of joy. These are our prayers this day, O God, offered in the name of Christ. Amen*
*Some of the thoughts and phrases in this prayer came from Ruth Duck’s Flames of the Spirit and The Worshipbook of the PCUSA.
For Lasting Marriages, Church Matters…
Studies of the relationship between spirituality and marital longevity offer helpful clues for having a marriage that sizzles rather than fizzles.
A national 15-year study found that couples who went to church once a month or more were less than half as likely to divorce as those who rarely or never attended. Interestingly, neither the husband’s nor wife’s respective religious affiliations, nor whether they belonged to the same denomination, made a difference. Only the frequency of their religious attendance correlated significantly with their commitment to maintaining the marriage.
A 1999 study of 97 couples found that those who saw marriage as sacred “tended to engage in more constructive, collaborative means of problem-solving than did the less spiritual group.” Results showed the more religiously active couples not only rated higher in marital satisfaction and had fewer marital conflicts, they also felt marriage benefited them more as individuals. They solved problems in constructive ways rather than resorting to hostility, such as verbal aggression and stonewalling.
Another study of 147 couples whose first marriages lasted 20 years or more found that 10 traits consistently rose to the top of a list of 59 potential strengths:
1. Lifetime commitment to marriage
2. Loyalty to spouse
3. Strong moral values
4. Respect for spouse as best friend
5. Commitment to sexual fidelity
6. Desire to be a good parent
7. Faith in God and spiritual commitment
8. Desire to please and support spouse
9. Good companion to spouse
10. Willingness to forgive and be forgiven
-- Susan S. Larson, M.A.T.
Post your comments using Facebook: